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The Review: Brave Genius

In Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures
from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize* (2014) University of
Wisconsin molecular biologist Sean B. Carroll is the story of two men who tried
to live ethical lives during some of the world’s darkest hours.

Brave
Genius
follows the parallel lives of Albert Camus and Jacques Monod, two of twentieth
century France’s greatest thinkers and ethicists. Both men were Nobel Laureates (Camus for
literature, Monod for physiology) whose professional successes were matched by
their activities—both overt and covert—as public intellectuals.

During the German occupation of
France in WWII, Camus and Monod were active members of the French Resistance:
Camus wrote scathing editorials in the Resistance newspaper Combat while Monod led sabotage missions—activities
frequently punished by execution. After
the war, both men became outspoken critics of Soviet-style Communism and the
stultifying effects of totalitarianism on personal liberties and public
discourse.

The strongest aspect of Brave Genius is in its characterization
of Monod and his daring-do. Truly, it is
Monod who is the hero of this book—and rightly so. Until I read Brave Genius, I was not familiar with Monod, his awarding winning
work on gene expression, or even his contributions to French intellectual
life. Carroll’s tight, tension-building
prose underscores the gravity of Monod’s heroic actions.

Ironically, Brave Genius’s greatest
weakness is its central marketing point: the friendship between Monod and
Camus. The book is marketed as an
exploration of the formative friendship between Camus and Monod; Carroll goes
so far as to claim that Camus’s friendship with Monod was on the most indelible
relationships Camus ever had. However,
Carroll only succeeds in showing how the men lead parallel lives, the reader is
left in the awkward position of having to accept that the men had a fraternal
bond based on a few excerpted letters and the author’s word alone. Had Carroll brought the friends together more
within the pages of Brave Genius,
this claim at deep friendship would have seemed less tenuous.

Overall, Brave Genius is well worth
a read for Camus fans, French culture enthusiasts, and war buffs alike.

*This book was sent to me by the
publisher for review. I have not been
financially compensated for this review and the thoughts expressed herein are
my own.